


Sweep all the Pieces Under the Bed

by patientalien



Category: Life as a House
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:46:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patientalien/pseuds/patientalien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People don't change as easily as the movies say. It's just not human nature, no matter what they tell you. Snapshots of life after the summer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweep all the Pieces Under the Bed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [indiefic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indiefic/gifts).



It wasn't that he really wanted to. He didn't particularly like it - he wasn't gay or anything, despite what Josh liked to imply. He just got used to the money, that was all. Well, not even the money, since Josh paid him in weed, not cash.

The weed, he'd gotten used to the weed. And sure, the whole stupid summer had been one big rehab session for the most part, but Sam knew people just didn't change over one summer, even if people's dads died and they built houses and stuff like that. No, people didn't just change. People liked to get high, and liked to have money, and sometimes people needed to get in a guy's car and fondle him through his Hagar slacks whether people wanted to or not.

Sam knew he'd done the right thing just giving the house away, but sometimes he wished George hadn't done such a fucking number on his head to make him want to do "the right thing", since the wrong thing - keeping and selling the house - would have been a lot easier, plus would have made it so he had enough money not to have to let Josh pay him in weed for hand jobs in parking lots.

The pills he'd taken were starting to kick in when the car pulled up. It was harder to get good prescriptions without George and his laize-faire methods of hiding his oxy bottles, but the summer had taught Sam to be resourceful.

He made it a point not to look directly at any of the men whose cars he got into or whose dicks he sucked - it was over in fifteen minutes anyway, no point in getting overly involved in the process. This time, though, his foot caught on a dip in the pavement (okay, maybe it was the oxy he'd taken and the monster bong hit he'd done a few minutes ago, but whatever) and when he caught himself on the door of the car, he caught a glimpse of the guy's face.

He almost puked, because the last thing he wanted to do was give an HJ (or any kind of "J") to somebody who looked a hell of a lot like George.

"Oh, fuck me," Sam moaned to himself.

888888

His mother always looked so fucking disappointed. Like she'd expected him to just… be a perfect specimen of adolescence the second the fucking house went up. Like he was supposed to just forget how it felt not to feel, to not want that just because George was dead and he was supposed to honor the memory of whatever he'd done that summer. Besides, jerking off wasn't any fun the normal way.

When she took the bar down from his closet and replaced it with a set of drawers, she just shook her head sadly while Sam railed at her – who was she to fuck with his shit, anyway? Her douchebag husband just called him a fag and threatened, again, military school. Like he'd last thirty seconds there.

Whenever Sam saw them together, he wanted to puke because he knew his mom was about a minute away from getting back with George and now George was dead and she was back with the fucking asshole, not that he really cared one way or the other, he just would have preferred not to deal with all the crap that went with that. Like now, with Peter rolling his eyes and pretending he wasn't, when Sam stumbled into the kitchen – ambien made him sleepwalk. Or, rather, semi-sleepwalk, since he was never really asleep. That would make things too fucking easy, wouldn't it? He got a look at his mother from under half-closed eyelids, saw her sad, stricken face, and realized hazily that he'd forgotten about dinner again.

He'd never forgotten to eat when he'd been building the house.

888888

George came back a few more times. That wasn't his real name, of course, but Sam was never with it enough to ask the guy's actual name, and even if he had been, he really couldn't have brought himself to care. The guy was there to get his rocks off, and Sam didn't need to know his name for that. But he didn't really want to think of the guy as George either, because that was a level of weird and creepy he couldn't even begin to fathom, even after the mushrooms took effect. Actually, especially then.

He wanted to tell the guy to stop coming, to leave him alone, because having to fucking look at him made him have to think, and thinking was not something Sam wanted to be doing a hell of a lot of. Thinking led to remembering, and remembering hurt too damn bad.

He didn't make eye contact with any of them, but he was extra-careful now, just look down at the floor mat of the car, no conversation, no contact besides hand on flesh and then it could be done faster and he could take another hit and forget this whole thing

But then one night the guy asked his name, and when "Sam" tripped off his tongue, he realized forgetting was more complicated than just not looking.

888888

Alyssa stopped trying to get him to come over. She wasn't with Josh anymore, but she wasn't exactly interested in anybody employed, as it were, by Josh either, especially by the third time Sam passed out in her shower. Her mom drove him home, wet and he would have been humiliated if he'd been a little less stoned, and told him in no uncertain terms he wouldn't be welcome at their house anymore, but that she was sorry. And then she talked to his mom for a long time, and Sam heard the words "rehab" and "boarding school" thrown around, and he wished his mom hadn't taken down his fucking closet rod because even though he didn't feel like jerking off, he did feel like dying.

Instead he took four ambien and smoked a bowl of weed and slept for two days.

888888

People don't just change overnight. Or over a summer. Or even in the year following that summer. People just keep doing what they're doing, and every so often become a better person for a minute, an hour, a summer.

A year after George died and the house was sold, Sam stood on the edge of the cliffs, the burning shame of his last encounter with the man who looked too much like the man he was pretty sure he hated still burning, and looked out at the water.

He waited to hear the waves hit the cliff, and jumped, and even though his eyes were closed, he was pretty sure he could see Catalina.

**Author's Note:**

> Sam made this a little more depressing than originally intended, and I wrote it with the movie on repeat. Not the most upbeat holiday story, but nevertheless. Happy holidays. :)


End file.
